Sidney Fels and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia have developed an electrical device that, in essence, uses hand movements to create voice-like sounds. They call it a gesture-to-voice synthesizer, but you can think of it as a talking glove, or singing glove.

Fels, with UBC colleagues Johnty Wang and Bob Pritchard, appear to have harnessed familiar electronic squeals and squawks into a subtle, controllable electronic voice. It's being used to make some oddly compelling harmonies.
 
But to really understand how strange the device is, and how strangely beautiful the sound that can be made with it, you have watch, and listen. In a symposium Sunday at the AAAS Annual Meeting, Fels and other scholars described the evolution of a new era in sign, gesture, and interactive communication.

The briefing in Vancouver, British Columbia, was entitled, "Gesture, Languagge, and Performance: Aspects of Embodiment."
Also speaking at the symposium were:

• Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson, director, UBC Cognitive Systems Program, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; and
• Martha Tyrone, Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York